The arrival of the Commitments Assessment Tool is a game changer for organizations in this network that have been working to engage and benefit from the Commitments of High-Impact Nonprofit Organizations, the Alliance for Strong Families and Communities' framework for organizational impact.

Members implementing the Commitments Assessment Tool receive a highly authoritative, tangible, actionable report on their organizational maturity in each of the Commitments areas. The tool is unique because it evaluates not just operational practices, but the culture and values that distinguish human-serving organizations. The results will allow organizations to benchmark against peer organizations, prioritize areas of improvement, and seamlessly access related Alliance resources.

10 Benefits of the Assessment

Demystify Your Path to Impact: Maximizing and documenting your organization’s community impact is no easy task, but it’s what your stakeholders increasingly expect. As the essential first step in engaging the Commitments, the Assessment provides a definitive snapshot of your real-world strengths and challenges.

Receive Customized Analysis: Our sector is inundated with intriguing frameworks for organizational performance, but they have a universal drawback: after you buy into the concept, it’s up to you to figure out how it applies to your organization. In contrary, your Commitments Assessment report is specific to your circumstances. One-hundred-and-fifty scientifically valid questions will rigorously analyze your organization’s maturity in each of the ten Commitments.

Assess Values, Not Just Practices: As guardians of the nation’s social values, human-serving organizations can’t stop at achieving “high performance;” we must also embrace a responsibility for leading attitudinal and systemic change. Uniquely, the Assessment evaluates both your operational practices and how your organization is implementing the values that distinguish the nonprofit human-serving field.

Enhance Staff Engagement and Retention: Because the Commitments are about both practices and the values lived throughout your organization, the Assessment is administered to staff at all levels. Participation engages the voice of the staff in the organization’s future, and breaks down silos by raising their sights to what it really takes to achieve the organization’s mission. (Staff results can be segmented for greater insight, allowing you to target your internal communications and staff development efforts.)

Jumpstart your Strategic Planning: The resulting Assessment report will allow you to set priorities with a new level of assurance, helping you target and allocate resources to the specific practices and initiatives that will enhance community impact. (Some Alliance organizations are already using the Commitments as a basis for strategic planning.)

Sharpen Your Brand: By crystalizing the areas where you excel, the Assessment report becomes a basis for articulating and communicating your organization’s distinctive strengths to your board, volunteers, staff, donors, funders, and community partners.

Benchmark Against Peers: Far from a mere set of scores on a spreadsheet, the Assessment report allows you to quantify and judge your performance against all Alliance network members who have completed the Assessment.

Supercharge Your Networking: Networking with peers is one of the most valued benefits of Alliance membership; the Commitments are rapidly becoming the language through which this communication takes place. Your peer-to-peer search for solutions will be accelerated when guided through the lens of your Assessment results.

Advance the Sector: Share your strength: Where the Assessment uncovers exemplary performance, the Alliance will partner with you to spread your breakthrough strategies across its 450-member network. As more and more organizations complete the Assessment, accumulated data will pinpoint the most powerful drivers of impact, resulting in an unprecedented set of empirically proven best practices for our sector.

Maximize Your Membership: The Alliance is structuring and systematizing its resources and services according to their Commitments relevance. Your Assessment team at the Alliance will work with you one-on-one to interpret your report and customize your engagement with the organization, directing you to a wealth of resources, curricula, cohort experiences, and on-site consulting services.